Subject to Change
by IWriteNaked
Summary: The best of times. The worst of times. There were galaxies in his eyes, and it made Clary's faulty heart beat irregularly. He reminded her that hell is real. She lives there. But her stomach should be proud for finally getting him down. One shot.
1. Chapter 1

**This happened this morning. Oops****.**

**Disclaimer: I don't own the Mortal Instruments.  
**

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-Clary Fray-

"What happened with Sebastian?" Jace asks, leaning across the table. He leans in so close that I can see the amber flecks in his luminous golden eyes.

_What happened with Sebastian?_

How could he be so cold hearted?

He consistently claimed that he wanted to fall in love, but I don't think love was what he really wanted. Sebastian liked the idea of love. He wanted the hot, passionate love he'd seen in all the romantic comedies that we curled up on the couch and watched together. He wanted someone to make him feel the way love songs did. He said he wanted true, strong and bottomless love, when evidence pointed to the contrary. He wanted someone who would love him and he did not want to give his love in return.

His father didn't know what love was, and his mother was disgusted by him. Sebastian was searching for the love his parents wouldn't give him, but he didn't know when he found it.

When I did my best to give him what he wanted; when he finally had the kind of love he'd always dreamed about, he had no idea what to do with it. The man was too far gone. When it came to love, he was a virgin; fifteen, untouched and blushing. I clung to his chest, and knew there was nothing left inside of him. He didn't feel anything.

_He left me. He left me. He left me._

When it boils down to it, he had more depth than he gave himself credit for and I weighed him down with all the true, pure, unadulterated kind of love I had in me, because that's what I thought he wanted. That's what he _said _he wanted from me, and I believed him. I _loved _him with such ferocity; even now it makes my head spin.

_It's over. It's over. It's over._

He held me in his arms, and then let me fall. Sebastian Verlac kicked me out of our shared apartment in the middle of the night when he became overwrought with the significance of the situation and the commitment our relationship offered.

_He's gone. He's gone. He's gone._

After that, he surgically removed whatever trueness was left in our short lived romance by not answering my phone calls, despite the fact that we vowed to remain friends in order to remember and respect what we shared. I didn't allow the pain to metastasize.

To tell the truth: He was a coward.

And he was easy to illicitly assess, behind his oversized ego. He projected his insecurities onto everyone around him. He was a cocky little shit, for someone who hated himself.

Sebastian was toxic, but so was I. We were too young to love, and we did not know that love is always subject to change.

The man never wanted me. He wanted the fantasy he'd built up inside of himself. The idea of how beautiful love could be. He failed to realize that there is hardship in love.

Now, reality is abstract. Sebastian is pretending that I didn't happen. He's pretending _we _didn't happen.

Just maybe one day, he'll hear me speak and actually listen to what I say. We could have lasted, but he didn't want me. He wanted out.

I don't love him anymore. I don't have enough patience or compassion in me to love a man who couldn't be bothered with the tragedy of loving me back. I won't romanticize people, like him. _I won't._

Looking back, our relationship makes no sense to me. I don't understand why we were ever together.

I guess I manage to remain content in my life by telling myself that fate is a true thing, and there are reasons for it when things don't work out. They say that when one door closes, another door opens. Simon would tell me that I could just reopen the closed door, because that's how doors work. I've been wasting all of my afternoons, reminding myself that there's a reason I left the old door alone.

I look at Jace's tawny eyes and know the reason is that the Great Divide has something else in store for me. It will be beautiful and better than ever before.

"We didn't want it enough."

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**Not open to continuation. This is just a quick, hard fic against the wall.**

**-IWriteNaked**


	2. Hurricane Clarissa

**I was inspired to write Sebastian's version of this story? ****¯\\_(****ツ****)_/¯**

**Thanks to my beta, rippingbutterflywings! You are my favorite.**  
**  
Based on Mercury Rising by From Autumn to Ashes. I wouldn't suggest listening to it unless you really like music that sounds awful but has amazing lyrics… Anyways, the lyrics are in italics throughout the story. Blah blah blah. It's 1 in the morning, kill me. It's time.**

**Disclaimer: I don't own the Mortal Instruments or Mercury Rising.**

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_Every breath that I exhale is a sigh—every breath that I exhale is a sigh of exhaustion._

Sebastian couldn't remember what a genuine smile felt like. They'd been faked for such a long time that he was having trouble differentiating between the two. He thought he may have been stable before he met Clary, but he honestly didn't remember life without her.

He may have had good days.

_How sad. This is what your life has been reduced to—a single room apartment containing no more than a mattress._ _How sad when the strings have been removed from the blinds, and all the outlets have been painted over._

Their shared apartment felt empty without her. Life was bleak and colorless without her laughter ringing off the walls. He wanted to beg Clary to come back home, but it had been months since he'd even attempted to dial her phone number. He promised to stay in contact—to be her friend—but he couldn't handle it.

Every day Sebastian woke up reaching out for her, like an amputee reaching out for a ghost limb. Clary always told him that nothing was certain—things were always subject to change. So why couldn't he just change his mind?

Words were not enough to describe how it felt to miss someone so badly that there was physical pain tearing hunks of flesh from his chest.

_And the television screen is streaked with blood smeared from your knuckles as you were trying to punch it out, but you underestimated its strength…or maybe you just weren't trying hard enough._

There was dried blood caked on his knuckles from ramming his fist into the television. His movements were laced with wrath, but Sebastian wasn't sure who he was angry with anymore. Himself, perhaps, for driving away the only person that ever cared about him. He never stopped being angry with his parents for never loving him. And he felt a lot of anger toward Jace, for loving Clary in a way that he could not.

_Startled by a knock at the door_, y_ou rise for the first time in two days to answer, but you can only greet the visitor with one short statement._

A loud bang echoed off the too-empty walls. They were so plain without Clary's artwork to decorate them and bring the room to life.

The sound of his door meeting someone's fist…

_"Hello, my first name is Distance, and I really don't care if I never wake up again."_

Sebastian dragged himself from the floor; his head was spinning. There was a fog of cigarette smoke so thick that he could taste it. This was not courage. It was a room where he started smoking Clary's brand of cigarettes while she tried to quit. He thought about kissing her, and how she shrugged him off as she walked out the door.

There was another knock at the door just before he reached out to turn the knob. It creaked as it swung open, revealing a tall blond standing on the other side.

_"Hello, my name is Distance, and I really don't care if I never wake up again."_

As Sebastian looked into his father's eyes, all he could think was that he had fucked himself over.

Again and again and again.  
_  
"Hello, I really don't care if I never wake up again."_

He wanted to cry. He wanted to return to his place in the corner and practice breathing, but all he could do was greet his father with one short statement:

_"I really don't care if I never wake up again."_

**I don't even know.**

**-IWriteNaked**


End file.
